Eleven fire crews rushed to the scene after the vehicle ignited in the southbound tunnel in Bowen Hills about 9.45am.

The tunnel was evacuated as police closed all entry and exit points of both the northbound and southbound lanes.

The truck driver was taken by ambulance to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital for treatment for minor smoke inhalation.

The fire was extinguished about 10.20am, but the tunnel remains closed.

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Meanwhile, the Bruce Highway at Elimbah is expected to be slowed for the majority of the day, with emergency roadworks closing one northbound lane.

A truck left the lane near the Steve Irwin Way early this morning, crashing into the guardrail.

Traffic control is on site guiding vehicles, however the work is not expected to be completed until late this afternoon.

Motorists on the Bruce Highway travelling southbound also experienced big delays this morning, with the flow-on effects from a minor car crash on the Gateway, just after 6am, felt for hours.

Karlie Wacker from the Australian Traffic Network said it wasn’t unusual for an early morning crash to impact peak hour traffic.

“There was a very early accident on the Gateway at Bracken Ridge,” she said.

“It was cleared fairly quickly, but the traffic was a mess.

“It is always heavy, but it does take just one little thing to throw it into a spin.”

A senior traffic and safety engineer with RACQ, Greg Miszkowycz, said the stretch of southbound highway between Deception Bay and Brisbane had been flagged as one of the motoring organisation’s “congestion red spots” in 2010.

“That sort of area is a bit of an issue because there are limited alternative routes,” he said.

“Should an incident occur just north of Brisbane there, because it is an already heavily trafficked corridor anyway, any incident, a crash, a broken down vehicle, can collapse the traffic flow and lead to severe delays on the corridor.”

He said suggestions for improving the traffic flow had been floated, including implementing a managed motorway system.

Managed motorways work to ease congestion by improving traffic flow through a range of methods, including regulating how many vehicles can enter the motorway at designated points and improving incident detection.

Mr Miszkowycz said motorists also had access to “real time” traffic incident reports and congestion updates, which could be used to find alternative routes or modes of transport.

“By looking at these websites, motorists can choose to delay their journey, choose an alternative route, if possible, or choose to take the train and they can make that decision before they set off on their journey,” he said.

Mr Miszkowycz said on days like today, where wet weather was a concern, traffic on the main city transport corridors tended to increase.

He said there were plans to build an alternative road corridor, which would run parallel to the Bruce Highway at Pine River to service the growing Mango Hill and North Lakes communities.

However the north south arterial road at Mango Hill was not expected to be delivered until at least 2020.